Police in Chicago say charges are expected Thursday following the disturbing video that emerged this week showing a group of four people shouting obscenities about the president-elect and white people while abusing a man authorities say has mental health issues.

The specific charges have not been determined. Authorities say the people in the video will at least face charges that could include kidnapping and battery, while state officials are weighing whether to pursue hate crime charges as well.

The shaky video shows a terrified young man in a gray hooded sweatshirt and dark pants crouching in a corner, his wrists and neck bound with orange bands, his mouth taped shut.

A young woman films as two young men slash the sleeves of his shirt with knives, then take turns punching him, slapping him and stomping on his head. At one point, one of the men can be seen cutting the victim’s hair and scalp with a knife, and the victim is later shown bleeding from his injuries.

As the victim cowers with his back to the wall, someone can be heard repeatedly shouting, “F‑‑‑ Donald Trump” and “F‑‑‑ white people.”

Throughout the 28-minute video — which focuses mostly on the young woman behind the camera — the group laughs, jokes and listens to music as the victim sits motionless on the floor. About halfway through, someone says the man “represents Trump,” and threatens to put him in the trunk of a car and “put a brick on the gas.”

It’s unclear what happens to the victim when the video cuts off.

Chicago police on patrol said they found the disoriented victim walking down the street Tuesday in shorts, despite the frigid cold, and took him to the hospital for treatment. They said he was mentally disabled and appeared to be “in crisis.”

Shortly after, police said, they responded to a battery call at a residence on the same block and took four suspects — two men and two women — into custody. Police said that three of the four people are 18, while the fourth is 24; authorities have not identified any of them. The victim is also 18 and has also not been officially identified.

On Wednesday, the four people were being held on suspicion of abusing and torturing the man in a brutal assault police say the group streamed on Facebook Live, which allows users to broadcast real-time events from their mobile phones and has increasingly been employed to air disturbing and often criminal conduct, along with personal rants, cat videos and hoaxes.

Police declined to give the race of the attackers or the victim. In the video, the attackers appear black. The victim appears to be white.

Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said that the victim was an adult man with “mental health challenges.” The suspects were in custody Wednesday and awaiting formal charges, which could potentially include hate crime charges, Johnson told reporters in a news conference.

“The images in the video put on display the brazenness of the offenders who assaulted the victim and then broadcast it for the entire world to see,” Johnson said.

“It’s sickening. It makes you wonder what would make individuals treat somebody like that,” he said. “It still amazes me how you still see things that you just shouldn’t. I’m not going to say it shocked me, but it was sickening.”

According to police, the victim lived in the Chicago suburb of Crystal Lake and was acquainted with one of the suspects through school. Police said the victim appeared to have voluntarily met up with the suspect he knew at some point and later rode with others in a stolen van to Chicago’s West Side. He was with the suspects for at least 24 hours and maybe as long as 48 hours, police said.

Police in nearby Streamwood, Ill., said the victim’s parents had not heard from him since Dec. 31, when they dropped him off at a McDonald’s in the area, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. After reporting him missing on Monday, police said, the victim’s parents received “text messages from persons claiming to be holding him captive.”

At about 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, shortly after police found the victim wandering in the street, officers were called to a battery at a residence in Chicago’s Homan Square neighborhood on the city’s West Side. There, they “discovered signs of a struggle and damage to the property and were able to link this evidence to the disoriented male,” the department said in a statement.

Question: if this story were about four white supremacists doing this to a black mentally disabled man, forcing him to drink out of a toilet, forcing him to say he looooved white people, torturing him, slicing him with a knife, forcing him to curse Hillary Clinton, how do you think the mainstream media for whom this present story is no big deal cover it????

Democrats are demon-possessed hypocrites.

We’re being told that charges are coming, and that the liberal Chicago authorities “did not rule out classifying the attack as a hate crime.” You know, the way we shouldn’t have ruled out the vicious Japanese Pearl Harbor attack as an act of war.

Now, what’s funny is how this was carried LIVE on Facebook for quite a period of time. And this isn’t the “fake news” about face Republican racism that butthurt Democrats who want to blame EVERYTHING about the last election on everyone and everything but their godawful party and their godawful platform and their godawful candidate who ran a godawful race because of all her godawful problems with incompetence and outright criminality; no, this Facebook story is REAL news about ACTUAL Democrat racism and hate and violence.

What these people very obviously want is a form of vindictive redistribution of wealth whereby they literally use the raw power of government to confiscate white people’s bank accounts and businesses and homes such that THEY now enjoy “majority/economic/political power” and maybe one day actually admit, “Okay, black people CAN be racist, after all, but racism is okay now because we’re the ones who are doing it!”

No. Rather “African-Americans” are the most racist people on the face of the earth today.

Or, to put it another way, when those four black thugs were torturing that poor terrorized white mentally disabled man, JUST WHO THE HELL HAD THE “UNEQUAL POWER RELATION”? When that mentally disabled white man was bound and helpless and being tortured, just how DEMON-POSSESED are you to look at me with a straight face and say, “Well, he was white, so it was those four black people who had bound and tortured him who are actually “oppressed” and that bound mentally disabled white man was the “racist”????

If we are to have any chance, our society needs to reach a point where all people are human beings from the moment of conception – because otherwise we will have an endless debate over what qualifies one as “human” and innate and incommensurable human dignity gets thrown out the window; we need to end concepts such as “Black Lives Matter” just as we need to end slogans such as “White Power!” and “Black Power!” because such statements are inherently racist all. And we need to – having decided that we are in fact all human beings – to decide to hold all people RESPONSIBLE as human beings for their deeds.

I’ll tell you what: it’s not even a QUESTION of whether “hate crime” charges ought to be filed here; let’s “file” that under “no-brainer.” Because IF hate crime charges aren’t filed, we all have it for all time and eternity an understanding of what “hate crime charges” truly are: a racist attempt by racist liberals to hijack the system in a Stalinist manner to obtain “show trials” for a purely partisan ideological purpose rather than seeking ANY form of “racial justice.”

This is NOT the first time that “hate crime” charges should have been filed by this demonic administration. I’ve written about this crap many times before: here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and oh the hell with it I could go on for quite a damn while.

And that means if you decide that these four black racist youths who tortured that poor white disabled man while yelling racist and political slogans aren’t guilty of “hate crimes” because they’re just young people venting; then that’s all Dylan Roof did when he went to that black church and shot it up as an act of hate against black people and Christians alike.

We therefore need to abolish the racially polarizing Democratic Party and get rid of all the “Civil Rights leaders” who preach hate for white people and return to a time when people were NOT judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

Don’t you DARE touch our precious terrorist friends, you Republican monsters. We who rabidly despise America and we who rabidly despise any Christian influence over America and who have murdered more than 60 million babies in our abortion mills love and protect our friends who share our desire to impose our dictatorial tyranny via an all-powerful state.

The Islamic State’s bloody campaign of public beheadings is actually intended to save American lives, Britain’s most notorious Islamic cleric declared in a radio interview Sunday.

“One of the primary reasons why you see what you are seeing on your own television and Internet is to try to end the war quickly,” stated radical preacher Anjem Choudary when asked to justify the ISIS beheadings.

“This kind of terrorizing and horrifying the enemy is saying to them, ‘Look don’t engage with them. Stay away.’ This is supposed to be something which drives the enemy away and therefore saves many lives.”

Reverend Canon Andrew White, head of the only Anglican church in Iraq, described in a recent interview some of the atrocities committed against Iraqi Christians by the Islamic State, including the beheading of four children who refused to convert to Islam and told their killers, “We love Yeshua [Jesus], we have always loved Yeshua.”

THIS is what Democrats prefer to the enhanced interrogation methods that broke terrorists and led to intelligence breakthroughs that kept decent people safe:

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — The Taliban massacre that killed 148 people, mostly children, at a military-run school in northwestern Pakistan left a scene of heart-wrenching devastation, pools of blood and young lives snuffed out as the nation mourned and mass funerals for the victims got underway Wednesday.

The attack at the Army Public School and College in the city of Peshawar on Tuesday was the deadliest slaughter of innocents in the country and horrified a nation already weary of unending terrorist assaults.

Blood was still splattered on the floor and the stairs as media were allowed inside the school a day after the attack. Torn notebooks, pieces of clothing and children’s shoes were scattered about amid broken window glass, door frames and upturned chairs. A pair of child’s eyeglasses lay broken on the ground.

Prayer vigils were held across Pakistan and in other schools, students spoke of their shock at the brutal slayings in Peshawar, where children and teenagers were gunned down and some of the female teachers burned alive. Army commandos fought the Taliban in a day-long battle until the school was cleared and all the attackers were dead.

The attack began when seven Taliban gunmen, explosives strapped to their bodies, scaled a back wall using a ladder to get into the school on Tuesday morning. Once inside, they made their way into the main auditorium where many students had gathered for an event, military spokesman Maj. Gen. Asim Bajwa told reporters during the tour Wednesday.

The militants then made their way to the hall’s stage and started shooting at random. As students tried to flee for the doors, they were shot and killed. The military recovered about 100 bodies from the auditorium alone, Bajwa said.

Democrats demand that we bow down to the thugs who want to impose Government in place of God because that’s precisely what THEY want to do.

We all know the scenario from the movies: terrorists are just about to launch a monstrous attack that would slaughter hundreds, thousands or even millions of innocents. But we catch one of the roaches just short of too late and somebody with a vestige of moral courage inflicts a tiny fraction of the misery the terrorist insect would inflict on as many innocents as possible. And makes him TALK.

Democrats are officially on the record saying don’t you DARE, hero. Let the millions of innocents perish to protect the sacred liberal value of the people forced to become passive, helpless sheep powerless to avoid a fate imposed on them by those who worship the power to control them.

The heart of the Democrat Party is the heart of darkness. They are people who have proven again and again that they believe good is evil and evil is good.

Here is the counsel of the Word of GOD concerning this wicked Democrat Party:

The LORD saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. – Genesis 6:5

“Should you help the wicked and love those who hate the LORD? Because of this, wrath has gone out against you from the LORD” – 2 Chronicles 19:2

A wise man’s heart directs him toward the right, but the foolish man’s heart directs him toward the left. — Ecclesiastes 10:2

You love evil more than good, Falsehood more than speaking what is right. — Psalm 52:3

But he who sins against Me injures himself; all those who hate Me love death — Proverbs 8:36

There is a way which seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death. — Proverbs 14:12

Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! — Isaiah 5:20

You who hate good and love evil, Who tear off their skin from them And their flesh from their bones — Micah 3:2

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools – Romans 1:22

For God’s wrath is being revealed from heaven against all the ungodliness and wickedness of those who in their wickedness suppress the truth – Romans 1:18

In their case, the god of this world has blinded the minds of those who do not believe to keep them from seeing the light of the glorious gospel of the Messiah, who is the image of God. — 2 Corinthians 4:4

Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron — 1 Timothy 4:2

This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come… — 2 Timothy 3:1

For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. — 2 Tim 4:3-4

Now we have Obama the rabid fascist dictator once again urinating on the Constitution and defecating on the will of the American people as he vomits out yet another fascist executive order that unilaterally imposes Obama’s thug nature on America.

We have never seen a president or a political part that has been so contemptuous of the law in American history. You have to go to Hitler and his godless, socialist Nazi Party or Stalin and his godless, socialist Communist Party for any historic parallel to what we’ve seen from Obama and his godless, socialist Democrat Party.

As you consider how evil Democrats are treating our intelligence professionals who desperately tried to do what they had to do to keep America safe after a massive attack in the midst of widespread fear that there was more to come, consider that wicked Democrats are treating our police the SAME EXACT WAY as they chant in the streets, “What do we want?” “Dead cops!!!” “When do we want it?” “NOW!!!”

I don’t doubt for one nanosecond that that is PRECISELY the view that our intelligence professionals have toward Obama and his Demoroaches.

There will soon come a moment when U.S. intelligence captures a terrorist who will have detailed knowledge of a massive attack against the citizens of the United States. And because of Barack Hussein Obama and the wicked party of Barack Hussein Obama, our forces will either field-execute the rat bastard or they will look at him helplessly as he defiantly mocks them knowing that they do not dare touch him. And Americans will die and they will deserve to die because they voted to cover themselves in the demon-possessed wickedness of Obama and his Democrat Party. And all I can do is quote the exact words of Obama’s “reverend” for 23 years:

I’ve come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect…

So I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed. That experience guides my conviction that partnership between America and Islam must be based on what Islam is, not what it isn’t. And I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.

Nine-eleven was an enormous trauma to our country. The fear and anger that it provoked was understandable, but in some cases, it led us to act contrary to our traditions and our ideals. We are taking concrete actions to change course. I have unequivocally prohibited the use of torture by the United States, and I have ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed by early next year.

Obama ordered Gitmo to be closed by early next year, he said in June 2009. But it’s kind of weird; here it is September 2012 and APPARENTLYSOMEHOWNOBODY BOTHERED TO LISTEN TO HIS STUPID ORDER.

That and the fact that our hoity-toity, self-righteous, sanctimonious little weasel-in-chief proclaimed America an evil nation of torturers and hypocrites who threw our traditions and ideals in the garbage can until Mr. Messiah the Magnificent came along as the “better angel of our nature.” And of course Obama is very sorry for the evil torturer nation of reprobate hypocrites that America was before it traded Jesus for him but as our new messiah Obama promises we’ll never be evil or torturers or throw away our traditions and ideals ever again.

We’re so very sorry for getting angry that you attacked us and murdered 3,000 of us. It was very un-American for us to get pissed and rise up, just as it was un-American when we responded to the Pearl Harbor attack by spending the next four tradition- and ideal-shattering years kicking Japan’s ass across the Pacific. But don’t you worry, Muslim world, under my magnificence, America will take concrete actions to change course so we never ever try to defend ourselves ever again.

Obama tells us that he was UNIQUELY qualified (which I suppose is why he’s such a messiah) by his own personal wonderfulness to bridge the gulf between Western Civilization and Muhammad and between Christianity and Islam. He promised to give the world a “new beginning.”

And it’s just so damn wonderful. I can’t tell you how many warm fuzzies I have.

Until I think about the fact that it was and is and will always be a projectile-vomiting joke.

Perceptions of the U.S. and President Barack Obama have nosedived in the Arab World to levels lower than during the Bush administration, a remarkable reversal for Obama, who made a speech vowing a new era of relations with the Arab world shortly after being elected.

Frankly, there aren’t enough words or superlatives in the English dictionary to describe the great Thomas Sowell. With an unparalleled gift to explain even the most complicated subjects in simple and easily understandable terms, few can match the pedigree and contributions of the Hoover Institute senior fellow. Author of the new book, “Dismantling America,” Sowell recently sat down for an interview with Investors Business Daily’s David Hogberg. And along with a few priceless jabs at Michelle Obama, sociology, Newsweek, and the public education system, Dr. Sowell discussed why he (like Niall Ferguson) believes America may be entering a prolonged period of decline.

“The only analogy I can think of from history is when the Norman conquerors of England published their laws in French for an English-speaking nation,” Sowell says about the Obama administration’s governing style, a style he characterizes as unconstitutional.

As someone who, if forced to, would label himself as more libertarian than conservative — though he has irked many with his support of American combat missions in Iraq — most noteworthy (and a bit shocking) about the interview is what Sowell believes the greatest threat is — terrorism, Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the international scene. Questioned as to what some of the current markers of national decline are, it isn’t “huge bills that fundamentally change the way the economy operates,” reckless government spending, social engineering programs and the national debt which worry the economist the most, it is national security and President Obama’s foreign policy.

And Sowell makes a few not-so-subtle Neville Chamberlain analogies that are almost impossible to ignore:

Of course, the one that trumps them all is on the international scene. That’s where Iran is moving toward nuclear weapons. I’m just staggered at how little attention is being paid to that compared to frivolous things. If a nation with a record of sponsoring international terrorism gets nuclear weapons, that changes everything and it changes it forever.

Someday historians may wonder what were we thinking about when you look at the imbalance of power between the U.S. and Iran, and we sat there with folded hands and watched this happen, going through just enough motions at the United Nations to lull the public to sleep. That, I think, is the biggest threat.

Sowell also condemns the president for affronting our allies (in particular, the British and Israelis) in “clever” yet unmistakable ways the general public may not notice, further hastening America’s decline:

His first foreign policy gambit was to fly to Russia and offer to renege on the American commitment to put a missile shield in Eastern Europe…All he really got out of that was a demonstration of his amateurishness and of his willingness to sell out allies in hopes of winning over enemies. That ploy was tried in the 1930s and didn’t work all that well.

These are no ordinary times, with no ordinary president. Leading up to the historic “Hope and Change” election, commentators on the Right could not possibly have attacked Obama and his intentions to fundamentally change the identity and economy of America more than they already had. Even so, not only has President Obama fulfilled every single “fear-mongering” indictment down to a tee, he’s exceeded them — making even some his most extreme opponents look clairvoyant. So with keeping that in mind, and considering all the new challenges we face domestically, that one of the greatest economic minds of our time would still elevate national security and terrorism to such a level truly speaks volumes about the reality and situation of Iran.

Also citing the lack of expertise and national discussion in international issues, former U.S. Ambassador John Bolton confirmed to Greg Gutfeld that he was seriously considering a presidential run on Red Eye last week. Bolton-Sowell 2012? One can only dream. But hey, if a community organizer can get elected, why not someone with ten times the accomplishments and wisdom?

I’ve said many of the same things, myself. Just not as well, and not as succinctly. For example, I said:

If Iran gets its nukes, it will be able to do a number of things: 1) attack Israel, assuring Israel that if it uses its nukes against Iran, Iran will use its nukes against Israel; 2) shut down the Strait of Hormuz, which would immediately drive up the price of oil. The cost of gasoline in the U.S. would soar above $15 a gallon; 3) dramatically increase Iranian-sponsored terrorism worldwide.

If you don’t believe that a nuclear-armed Iran would pick a minimum of one of these options, you’re just nuts.

It shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to see that Iran is employing a lot of rocket scientists to create a ballistic nuclear missile capable of striking the United States and Israel. But when Democrats are in charge, even the most trivial aspects of common sense are akin to the most sophisticated form of theoretical mathematics.

“DES MOINES — Democratic presidential candidates teamed up during a National Public Radio debate here Tuesday to blast the Bush administration over its policy toward Iran, arguing that a new intelligence assessment proves that the administration has needlessly ratcheted up military rhetoric.

While the candidates differed somewhat over the level of threat Iran poses in the Mideast, most of themsought to liken the administration’s approach to Iran with its buildup to the war in Iraq.”

But the fact that the failure to deal with Iran rests ENTIRELY in Democrats’ hands won’t stop them from blaming Bush when Iran rears its vicious head against the world. Any more than it stopped them from blaming Bush for the 2008 economic collapse in spite of the fact that they had had total control of Congress for the previous two years, and even though they had repeatedly prevented Bush from regulating and reforming GSEs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – which were at the epicenter of the disaster.

It’s just what cowards do. And the Democrat Party is the party of moral cowardice going back to at least the Carter years, if not dating back to the waning days of the LBJ administration.

You can go back and review the record. Nearly 60% of the Democrats in the U.S. Senate (29 out of 50) voted to authorize the Iraq War Resolution. Furthermore, virtually every single top Democrat was on the factual record agreeing with George Bush and supporting his reasoning to attack Saddam Hussein –

– and yet Democrats en masse cowardly, despicably, and I would argue treasonously, turned on Bush and turned on our troops in time of war. For no other reason than to treacherously obtain a cheap political advantage aided and abetted by a mainstream media propaganda apparatus that could have come right out of the vile brain of Joseph Goebbels.

In addition to their opposition to the Iraq War (which again 60% of Senate Democrats voted for, only to repudiate and claim Bush deceived them), Democrats opposed the Patriot Act; opposed Domestic Surveillance which allowed the US to track calls from international terrorists into the United States; opposed Gitmo, even though it is the clearly the ONLY reasonable place to hold incredibly dangerous terrorists that no country wants; opposed allowing terrorists to be tried in military tribunals to safeguard intelligence techniques and personnel, and to prevent the court system from being hijacked by enemies of freedom; opposed even the most reasonable use of profiling to weed out terrorists intent upon murdering Americans; and even declared surrender in the vile “I believe that … this war is lost” statement of Harry Reid, the Democrat Senate Majority Leader. I could go on. It boils down to the fact that the left despise anything that help us win the war on terror or protect us from terrorism.

"RUN AWAY!!!"

To the extent that Barack Obama has done anything – ANYTHING – right at all in the war on terror, it has only been because he repudiated himself and demonstrated that he was either an incompetent fool or a lying hypocrite. Obama – after publicly denouncing, undermining and alienating the CIA – has continued the policy of “torture” by continuing the policy of “rendition” in which terror suspects are sent to other countries that use torture. Obama – after continually denouncing Bush over Gitmo – has STILL not closed the facility down two full years after usurping the office of the presidency with lies. Obama is using a surge strategy in Afghanistan after denouncing Bush’s successful surge strategy in Iraq and blatantly predicting it would fail. And Obama is now continuing the Bush policy of using predator drones to attack terrorist positions inside Pakistan that US Special Operations forces cannot reach.

Iran WILL get the nuclear bomb. Democrats guaranteed that Iran would be able to do so.

Iran will become a plague upon global peace and security unlike anything the world has ever seen at least since the rise of the Nazis and the abject failure of FDR and Neville Chamberlain to deal with the clear and present danger.

And when that day comes, America will be unable to meaningfully deal with it because Barack Obama and the Democrat Party made us economically incapable of rising to any significant occasion.

I didn’t used to believe in anything special about “Friday the 13th.” It was just another day. Turns out I was wrong.

Obama has brought about yet another “change.”

Friday the 13th now features a new monster – the President of the United States of America – as the Creature Who Made Terrorists Feel Right At Home. I know the name doesn’t sound as scary as “Jason Voorhees,” the hockey-masked hacker-slasher, but believe me, this is a monster that can kill more Americans than Jason Voorhees ever did.

And, of course, when a terrorists actually guns down more than two score unarmed soldiers on a military base, he denies the man is even a terrorist in a rush to whitewash lest the revelation somehow undermine our “diversity.”

Hope you terrorist-murderers feel at home. If there’s anything else we can do for you, please let us know. Our president will go to any lengths to make you as comfortable as possible.

Why are we going to put the 9/11 mastermind and four of his fellow murderers on trial in civilian court? Because Barack Obama is more righteous and wonderful than our despicable presidents of the past – such as Abraham Lincoln and the admittedly less-righteous FDR – have ever been. Honest Abe was actually DIShonest Abe because he had military tribunals.

WASHINGTON – In the biggest trial for the age of terrorism, the professed 9/11 mastermind and four alleged henchmen will be hauled before a civilian court on American soil, barely a thousand yards from the site of the World Trade Center’s twin towers they are accused of destroying.

Attorney General Eric Holder announced the decision Friday to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to trial at a lower Manhattan courthouse.

It’s a risky move. Trying the men in civilian court will bar evidence obtained under duress and complicate a case where anything short of slam-dunk convictions will empower President Barack Obama’s critics.

The case is likely to force the federal court to confront a host of difficult issues, including rough treatment of detainees, sensitive intelligence-gathering and the potential spectacle of defiant terrorists disrupting proceedings. U.S. civilian courts prohibit evidence obtained through coercion, and a number of detainees were questioned using harsh methods some call torture.

Holder insisted both the court system and the untainted evidence against the five men are strong enough to deliver a guilty verdict and the penalty he expects to seek: a death sentence for the deaths of nearly 3,000 people who were killed when four hijacked jetliners slammed into the towers, the Pentagon and a field in western Pennsylvania.

“After eight years of delay, those allegedly responsible for the attacks of September the 11th will finally face justice. They will be brought to New York — to New York,” Holder repeated for emphasis — “to answer for their alleged crimes in a courthouse just blocks away from where the twin towers once stood.”

Holder said he decided to bring Mohammed and the other four before a civilian court rather than a military commission because of the nature of the undisclosed evidence against them, because the 9/11 victims were mostly civilians and because the attacks took place on U.S. soil. Institutionally, the Justice Department, where Holder has spent most of his career, has long wanted to reassert the ability of federal courts to handle terrorism cases.

Lawyers for the accused will almost certainly try to have charges thrown out based on the rough treatment of the detainees at the hands of U.S. interrogators, including the repeated waterboarding, or simulated drowning, of Mohammed.

The question has been raised as to whether the government can make its case without using coerced confessions.

That may not matter, said Pat Rowan, a former Justice Department official.

“When you consider everything that’s come out in the proceedings at Gitmo, either from the mouth of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others or from their written statements submitted to the court, it seems clear that they won’t need to use any coerced confessions in order to demonstrate their guilt,” said Rowan.

Held at Guantanamo since September 2006, Mohammed said in military proceedings there that he wanted to plead guilty and be executed to achieve what he views as martyrdom. In a letter from him released by the war crimes court, he referred to the attacks as a “noble victory” and urged U.S. authorities to “pass your sentence on me and give me no respite.”

Holder insisted the case is on firm legal footing, but he acknowledged the political ground may be more shaky when it comes to bringing feared al-Qaida terrorists to U.S. soil.

“To the extent that there are political consequences, I’ll just have to take my lumps,” he said. But any political consequences will reach beyond Holder to his boss, Obama.

Bringing such notorious suspects to U.S. soil to face trial is a key step in Obama’s plan to close the military-run detention center in Cuba. Obama initially planned to close the prison by next Jan. 22, but the administration is no longer expected to meet that deadline.

Obama said he is “absolutely convinced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be subject to the most exacting demands of justice. The American people will insist on it and my administration will insist on it.”

After the announcement, political criticism and praise for the decision divided mostly along party lines.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said bringing the terrorism suspects into the U.S. “is a step backwards for the security of our country and puts Americans unnecessarily at risk.”

Former President George W. Bush’s last attorney general, Michael Mukasey, a former federal judge in New York, also objected that federal courts were not well-suited to this task. “The plan seems to be to abandon the view that we are at war,” Mukasey told a conference of conservative lawyers. He said trial in open court “creates a cornucopia of intelligence for those still at large and a circus for those being tried,” and he advocated military tribunals instead.

“By trying them in our federal courts, we demonstrate to the world that the most powerful nation on earth also trusts its judicial system — a system respected around the world,” Leahy said.

Family members of Sept. 11 victims were also divided.

“We have a president who doesn’t know we’re at war,” said Debra Burlingame, whose brother, Charles Burlingame, had been the pilot of the hijacked plane that crashed into the Pentagon. She said she was sickened by “the prospect of these barbarians being turned into victims by their attorneys.”

Congressional Republicans, however, promptly accused the Obama administration of trying to return to a pre-Sept. 11 mentality of criminalizing the war on terrorism.

Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas warned that “bringing these dangerous individuals onto U.S. soil needlessly compromises the safety of all Americans.”

House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio said the possibility that the accused terrorists “could be found not guilty due to some legal technicality just blocks from Ground Zero should give every American pause.”

A big obstacle could be whether an impartial jury can be impaneled so close to where the twin towers of the World Trade Center once stood.

Holder said that a careful jury selection process should dispel those concerns.

“I would not have authorized the bringing of these prosecutions unless I thought that the outcome … would ultimately be successful,” he said. “I will say that I have access to information that has not been publicly released that gives me great confidence that we will be successful in federal court.”

But what happens if you thought wrong, Holder? What happens then?

What happens if these guys are found not guilty? Are we supposed to just let them go?

What happens if the five terrorists draw a liberal activist judge who wants to make “torture” and issue, rather than “terrorism” and “3,000 murdered Americans”? Is Obama and his Justice Department at work to circumvent the system relating to the assigning of judges to particular cases and guarantee that “the right” judge hears the case? Wouldn’t that be tantamount to the very worst that Obama has claimed he wants to avoid in the first place? Wouldn’t that amount to a show trial?

Obama is either taking a giant chance, a literal roll of the dice, or he’s already stacked the deck.

What happens if a Muslim is on the jury pool? That one’s kind of interesting. A single juror can hang the jury and lead to a mistrial. Do we want to take a chance that a sympathizer throw a monkey wrench into the system? Is the Obama team that so values “diversity” going to try to prevent Muslims from serving on the jury?

What about a change of venue? Surely a judge would HAVE to grant such an obvious petition, given the fact that the attacks occurred in New York, virtually every adult was impacted, and “New York” is hardly the best place to find an untainted jury pool for the 9/11 attack on the “World Trade Center attack in New York”? And yet New York has this mulit-million dollar high tech courthouse complex to deal with them.

I mean, again, if you grant the change of venue, people will justifiably become enraged. And if you DON’T grant the change of venue, people will justifiably think that the fix is in.

A military tribunal of KSM and his terrorist buddies at Gitmo would have been a ho-hum affair. A civilian trial in a lower Manhattan courthouse with the press swarming over every detail like cockroaches would be the trial of the century.

Propaganda forum? You bet. Journalists will cover every remark that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his merry band of mass murderers offers. Including the words of solidarity with other jihadist murderers. Including words of encouragement to any who would murder Americans anywhere on the planet. This is hardly the message that the American media should be broadcasting, but rest assured we’ll be broadcasting every word of it.

Terrorists are different from jewel thieves and even from gang bangers: every single thing they do is directed toward spreading a message.

These terrorists want a big stage. And Barack Obama and Eric Holder want to make sure they have that stage.

And what happens if the trial – whether it’s held in New York or somewhere else – stimulates more terrorist attacks? It’s one thing if terrorists try to attack Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, quite another if they launch an attack in New York, Los Angeles, or wherever else.

And assuming (no guarantee anymore) that these terrorist monsters go to prison, you can bet in the age of Gitmo (which is actually a model prison) being shut down under Obama that these guys will end up in the U.S. civilian system. And they will be welcomed like rock stars.

“Over the past 30 years, Islam has become a powerful force in the U.S. prison system, with some estimates that up to 20% of the inmate population is now Muslim. Terrorism experts are increasingly concerned that disaffected inmates drawn to radical Islam could become a source of homegrown terrorist activity.”

Authorities are seeing more and more “homegrown jihadists” coming out of the prison system. Just two weeks ago, federal authorities were confronted by radicalized Muslims coming out of the U.S. prison system and organizing a cell that was claiming “that the government was the enemy and they must be willing to take on the FBI — even if it meant death.” And thanks to this brain dead decision by Barack Hussein, we’re going to start seeing a lot more of this. Putting these terrorists into the U.S. prison system is tantamount to putting crack cocaine in the hands of addicts. It will not end well.

This is a truly stupid idea on every level imaginable.

My question is, what are we gaining from taking what Obama’s Justice Department ADMITS is a risk? That we were “open”?

“No. They’ve got a drawer full of other charges that they could bring against these defendants. There are already indictments pending against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed for other crimes, so they will just re-arrest them and charge them with something else.”

The thing about a fair game is that either team could actually win. This isn’t a fair game. And everyone in the world is going to know that, no matter where it is held. Contrary to what the White House might think, the inhabitants of the rest of the world are not as stupid and gullible and willing to believe propagandist drivel as Democrats are. This isn’t going to be any kind of demonstration about how “open” we are. People who didn’t believe it before won’t start believing it now – unless and possibly even including that we allow the five terrorists to walk out of court free men.

A National Review article entitled, “Holder’s Hidden Agenda,” reminds us of how Obama’s people just ripped into the CIA and started pulling out every wire and diode they could. They demanded an investigation and just plain released all kinds of previously classified information that made the US and the CIA look as bad as they possibly could. To what end?

This summer, I theorized that Attorney General Eric Holder — and his boss — had a hidden agenda in ordering a re-investigation of the CIA for six-year-old alleged interrogation excesses that had already been scrutinized by non-partisan DOJ prosecutors who had found no basis for prosecution. The continuing investigations of Bush-era counterterrorism policies (i.e., the policies that kept us safe from more domestic terror attacks), coupled with the Holder Justice Department’s obsession to disclose classified national-defense information from that period, enable Holder to give the hard Left the “reckoning” that he and Obama promised during the 2008 campaign. […]

So: We are now going to have a trial that never had to happen for defendants who have no defense. And when defendants have no defense for their own actions, there is only one thing for their lawyers to do: put the government on trial in hopes of getting the jury (and the media) spun up over government errors, abuses and incompetence. That is what is going to happen in the trial of KSM et al. It will be a soapbox for al-Qaeda’s case against America. Since that will be their “defense,” the defendants will demand every bit of information they can get about interrogations, renditions, secret prisons, undercover operations targeting Muslims and mosques, etc., and — depending on what judge catches the case — they are likely to be given a lot of it. The administration will be able to claim that the judge, not the administration, is responsible for the exposure of our defense secrets. And the circus will be played out for all to see — in the middle of the war. It will provide endless fodder for the transnational Left to press its case that actions taken in America’s defense are violations of international law that must be addressed by foreign courts. And the intelligence bounty will make our enemies more efficient at killing us.

Like I said. The new Friday the 13th monsters revealed today as Barack Obama and his AG Eric Holder are far more dangerous to Americans than Jason Voorhees ever was.

We have a real crisis of credibility going on. The bottom line: someone is telling a great big fat giant lie that is so damaging that it threatens the institutions of this nation. Either it is Nancy Pelosi as leader of Congress, or it is the Central Intelligence Agency as the leading agency of our intelligence establishment. One of them has to go.

QUESTION: Madam Speaker, just to be clear, you’re accusing the CIA of lying to you in September of 2002?PELOSI: Yes, misleading the Congress of the United States, misleading the Congress of the United States. I am.

QUESTION: And also — and doing it again now, as they’ve released this list of briefings that says you were briefed on the interrogation tactics that were used.

In other words, it’s not just the CIA under Bush (along with the many career operatives who serve through both Democrat or Repbulican administrations), it is also Leon Panetta and the CIA under Obama that is continuing to lie if Nancy Pelosi should be believed.

Either Nancy Pelosi needs to resign, or the CIA needs to be disbanded. Barack Obama could replace the agency with a herd of winged unicorns that fly hither and thither, gathering information and conveying it to him by means of their magical powers. That way, Obama would be able to obtain all the intelligence data the country needs to remain safe without ever doing a single unpleasant thing to any terrorist murderer ever again.

The CIA lies to people for a living, and they are still far more trustworthy than Nancy Pelosi.

After demagoguing the waterboarding issue as a partisan attack on Republicans, Nancy Pelosi finally got hung up on her own petard. First she said she hadn’t been told about waterboarding; then she said she was told, but only that it “could be employed.” Then she acknowledged that she had been told it had been employed, but felt that she shouldn’t protest because she didn’t want to step on any toes (and, after all, she was also busy trying to undermine the Bush administration so Democrats could win); then she basically waffled that she hadn’t been told after all; and now she’s saying that everyone and their little dogs too lied to her.

Congress and Waterboarding: Nancy Pelosi was an accomplice to ‘torture.’

By KARL ROVE MAY 15, 2009

Someone important appears not to be telling the truth about her knowledge of the CIA’s use of enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs). That someone is Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. The political persecution of Bush administration officials she has been pushing may now ensnare her.

Here’s what we know. On Sept. 4, 2002, less than a year after 9/11, the CIA briefed Rep. Porter Goss, then House Intelligence Committee chairman, and Mrs. Pelosi, then the committee’s ranking Democrat, on EITs including waterboarding. They were the first members of Congress to be informed.

In December 2007, Mrs. Pelosi admitted that she attended the briefing, but she wouldn’t comment for the record about precisely what she was told. At the time the Washington Post spoke with a “congressional source familiar with Pelosi’s position on the matter” and summarized that person’s comments this way: “The source said Pelosi recalls that techniques described by the CIA were still in the planning stage — they had been designed and cleared with agency lawyers but not yet put in practice — and acknowledged that Pelosi did not raise objections at the time.”

When questions were raised last month about these statements, Mrs. Pelosi insisted at a news conference that “We were not — I repeat — were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used.” Mrs. Pelosi also claimed that the CIA “did not tell us they were using that, flat out. And any, any contention to the contrary is simply not true.” She had earlier said on TV, “I can say flat-out, they never told us that these enhanced interrogations were being used.”

In a report to Congress on May 5, Mr. Panetta described the CIA’s 2002 meeting with Mrs. Pelosi as “Briefing on EITs including use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah, background on [legal] authorities, and a description of the particular EITs that had been employed.” Note the past tense — “had been employed.”

Mr. Goss says he and Mrs. Pelosi were told at the 2002 briefing about the use of the EITs and “on a bipartisan basis, we asked if the CIA needed more support from Congress to carry out its mission.” He is backed by CIA sources who say Mr. Goss and Mrs. Pelosi “questioned whether we were doing enough” to extract information.

We also know that Michael Sheehy, then Mrs. Pelosi’s top aide on the Intelligence Committee and later her national security adviser, not only attended the September 2002 meeting but was also briefed by the CIA on EITs on Feb. 5, 2003, and told about a videotape of Zubaydah being waterboarded. Mr. Sheehy was almost certain to have told Mrs. Pelosi. He has not commented publicly about the 2002 or the 2003 meetings.

So is the speaker of the House lying about what she knew and when? And, if so, what will Democrats do about it?

If Mrs. Pelosi considers the enhanced interrogation techniques to be torture, didn’t she have a responsibility to complain at the time, introduce legislation to end the practices, or attempt to deny funding for the CIA’s use of them? If she knew what was going on and did nothing, does that make her an accessory to a crime of torture, as many Democrats are calling enhanced interrogation?

Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy wants an independent investigation of Bush administration officials. House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers feels the Justice Department should investigate and prosecute anyone who violated laws against committing torture. Are these and other similarly minded Democrats willing to have Mrs. Pelosi thrown into their stew of torture conspirators as an accomplice?

It is clear that after the 9/11 attacks Mrs. Pelosi was briefed on enhanced interrogation techniques and the valuable information they produced. She not only agreed with what was being done, she apparently pressed the CIA to do more.

But when political winds shifted, Mrs. Pelosi seems to have decided to use enhanced interrogation as an issue to attack Republicans. It is disgraceful that Democrats who discovered their outrage years after the fact are now braying for disbarment of the government lawyers who justified EITs and the prosecution of Bush administration officials who authorized them. Mrs. Pelosi is hip-deep in dangerous waters, and they are rapidly rising.

Nancy Pelosi is a documented liar and demagogue. She has no business serving as the Speaker of the House. She needs to go.

Given this level of shocking moral stupidity, I must confess to a growing sense of apathy. Between repeated instances of frankly treasonous actions by the Democrats; unsustainable mind-boggling spending on pork projects and socialism as Obama nearly doubles the 11 trillion national debt with well over $9 trillion of his own deficits; genuinely fascist takeovers of one sector of the economy after another; and coming heavy taxation that will punish productivity while rewarding sloth, I am seeing increasingly little chance that this country will survive. And it seems to me that we will have destroyed our own way of life long before terrorism ever could.

What I DO know is that if we DO get hit again, it will be ENTIRELY due to the contemptible efforts of the Obama administration to undermine virtually every single measure that successfully protected us, and Democrats like Nancy Pelosi, Jack Murtha, and many others who have been far more interested in demagoguery than defense, partisanship than patriotism, and slander than security.

Having studied my fair share of philosophy, I recognize the genetic fallacy when I hear it. And I heard it today from the mouth of Obama’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Let’s not talk about a legitimate issue; let’s instead demonize the person who is raising the legitimate issue while ignoring the issue itself. Hillary Clinton engaged in a textbook example of playing the politics of personal destruction – and distraction – rather than reveal the truth.

SecState HRC is testifying in front of the Foreign Affairs Committee and it seems she got into a bit of a heated exchange with Rep. Dana Rohrabacher — or he did with her — over the release of the interrogation memos.

Rohrabacher asks Secretary Clinton whether she agrees with former Veep Cheney’s suggestion that all memos on enhanced interrogation be released.

Secretary Clinton’s response? “It won’t surprise you that I don’t consider him to be a particularly reliable source of information…”

Rohrabacher bites back: “Madam Secretary, I asked you a specific question. … Dick Cheney has asked that specific documents be declassified. … I didn’t ask you what your opinion is of Dick Cheney and if you want to maintain your credibility with us, what is your opinion on the release of those documents?”

Secretary Clinton: “I think we should get to the bottom of this entire matter. I think it’s in the best interest of our country and that is what the president believes and that is why he’s taken the actions he’s taken.”

Well, that’s okay, I suppose. Dick Cheney just joined war hero and savior of the American effort in Iraq General David Petraeus in lacking credibility as far as Hillary Clinton is concerned.

WASHINGTON — Senator Clinton squared off yesterday with her possible challenger for the White House in 2012, General David Petraeus, and came closer than any of her colleagues to calling the commander of the multinational forces in Iraq a liar.

Using blunter language than any other Democrat in the last two days, Mrs. Clinton told General Petraeus that his progress report on Iraq required “a willing suspension of disbelief.”

Personally, I think that places Dick Cheney in far better company than the heroine of Whitewater, Travelgate, Filegate, a bunch of other assorted “-gates” and the wicked witch who blamed her husband getting blow jobs in the Oval Office on “a vast rightwing conspiracy.” And it was such a perfectly-executed conspiracy that those dreadful rightwingers were able to plant Bill Clinton’s own semen on Monica Lewinsky’s dress.

But that’s okay: her boss Obama is now going after all of those rightwing conspirators who believe horrible things such as: the right to exercise free speech; the right to peaceably assemble; the 14th Amendment’s restriction of the federal government encroaching on the rights of the states and the people; the right of an innocent baby to live; the right to think that the United States should protect America for its own citizens; the right of our heroic combat veterans not to be regarded as dangerous terrorist threats when they return home; etc.

I want you to understand something: THESE are the people saying former` Vice President Dick Cheney isn’t “reliable”:

From April 20: (AP) President Barack Obama does not intend to prosecute Bush administration officials who devised the policies that led to the harsh interrogation of suspected terrorists, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said Sunday.

From April 21: President Obama left open the door Tuesday for charges to be brought against Bush administration lawyers who justified harsh interrogation techniques, though he continued to argue that CIA agents who used those tactics should not be prosecuted.

JENNIFER LOVEN, AP: The $100 million target figure that the president talked about today with the Cabinet, can you explain why so small? I know he talked about—you know, you add up 100 million and 100 million, and eventually, you get somewhere, but it would take an awfully long time to add up hundred million (inaudible) in the deficit. Why not target a bigger number?

GIBBS: (Smiling) Well, I think only in Washington, D.C. is a hundred million dollars…

LOVEN: The deficit’s very large. It’s not a joke.

GIBBS: No, I’m…

LOVEN: The deficit’s giant. $100 million really is only a step.

GIBBS: But no joke.

LOVEN: You sound like you’re joking about it, but it’s not funny.

GIBBS: I’m not making jokes about it. I’m being completely sincere that only in Washington, D.C. is $100 million not a lot of money. It is where I’m from. It is where I grew up. And I think it is for hundreds of millions of Americans.

LOVEN: The point is it’s not a very big portion of the deficit.

TAPPER: You were talking about an appropriations bill a few weeks ago about $8 billion being minuscule—$8 billion in earmarks. We were talking about that and you said that that…

Of course, $100 million is a lot of money where anyone is from. But in Washington DC, where Obama has expanded government spending by gargantuan amounts, it’s 0.0029% of the budget. Or 0.00076% of what Obama spent on the “economic stimulus” spending spree

These are people who justify whatever the hell they want as “reliable information.” The same people who justify trivializing $8 BILLION in pork because that $8 billion makes them look bad almost immediately thereafter justify claiming that $100 million in budget cuts is a huge figure because they think that .0029% of the budget they say they’ll trim makes them look good. The people who claim Cheney lacks credibility massively lack so much of a shred of it themselves.

For the Obama administration, credibility means doublespeak. Openness means releasing only those documents that hurt the political opposition. Accountability means personally attacking anyone who raises a legitimate point.

So the administration that promised openness and accountability is now releasing only the documents that make the Bush administration and the United States of America look bad, but refuse to release the information that reveals how necessary and useful the actions that Bush took to protect this country. The administration that promised unparalleled bipartisanship is now pursuing the greatest political witch-hunt in American history and essentially transforming this country into a banana republic where the winners of the next election criminalize the previous administration. And personally attack anyone who confronts them for doing it while avoiding the main issue.

The facts are obvious to anyone who will consider them (or allow them to be released): the “harsh” interrogations worked. The Bush Administration officials were called upon to make extraordinary decisions in the heat of battle with thousands of dead Americans and many thousands or tens of thousands more feared to come. And they acted to protect the country.

So let’s have a communist show trial, forbid the accused from presenting any exculpatory or mitigating evidence in their own defense, and put them in prison. That’s the documented historical way of the left, after all.

That’s the new America under Barack Hussein.

One day a Republican administration will be back in power – and they’ll be mad as hell over the shocking perversions of justice that are going on right now. That administration will find its legal precedent to prosecute from what is going on right now. And the president and the administration that engaged in politically-motivated prosecutions is going to become the next victim of the next wave of politically-motivated prosecutions.

Note to the soon-to-be-prosecuted Bush officials: demand a change of venue out of Washington D.C., or you will be convicted of the crime of being a Republican just like Scooter Libby.